Thirteen

[warroom]

How many colonies have you gotten started?

I keep trying to get at least 13, because... well, America had 13 colonies. But getting 13 colonies, that's a lot of mouths to feed. And, a lot of liberty bells to produce.

 

[Desert-Fox]

Create 1 colony only, create only liberty bells from the start, explore map, sell guns/horses to indians and buy cannons, you get far better score.

 

[Imagawa99]

I have found it very hard indeed to get over 10 playing on revolutionary
It migth be a quirk in the way i play but every time i have gone for the 11th i have over extended myself, the revolution has taken too long and i have either stalled or ran out of turns fighting the REF

 

[Antilogic]

I tend to play with 4 very early on, then I expand to 7, maybe 8. That's it, though.

 

[Dale]

I quickly settle 6-7 size 1 cities then build up resource collection with converted natives, and ship colonists in from Europe. Most shipped colonists come over with guns or horses, or I just buy cannons.

 

[warroom]

I often build "factory" cities near water. This allows other cities to focus on raw production. And food cities to increase population.

 

[UWHabs]

Last game I had 8 (well, 9 if you count the one I founded from a convert that I got on my last turn of the game). 3 were conquered ones. If I were actually building up a full economy in the game, I could easily have used 4 more colonies: 1 to get furs, 1 to get sugar, 1 to convert furs to coats, 1 to convert sugar to rum. Maybe another one as just a lumber pump city to produce like crazy. With my 8, I probably had about 2 too many. 6 seems about perfect:
1 tools/guns town
2 factory towns to pump out cigars/cloth/rum/coats (depending what resources you harvest)
1 food town
2 raw materials towns, which convert to food towns when you declare independance.